weeklyOSM 467

25/06/2019-01/07/2019

Mapping

• A new iD feature, which adds Wikidata and Wikipedia tags for brands of retail chains, caused issues when restaurants with very similar names were tagged mistakenly, according to a GitHub bug report. One proposed solution is to use the tag not:brand:wikidata= to avoid the tag being added again. Quincy Morgan, one of the two iD maintainers, points to the approval process before introducing it.
• iD’s decision to support natural=water with water=reservoir instead of landuse=reservoir and to flag the latter for a tagging change led to a discussion on GitHub. The decision that was disputed isn’t new and goes back to December 2018.
• Emily Eros from SharedStreets has published a comprehensive article about kerb management, such as parking restrictions, which is becoming an important topic for businesses and local government. She noticed a comparative absence of data in OSM on the theme and was wondering why. She analyses current usage, highlights some difficulties and proposes new ways of adding the information.
• The addition of two new sections on the “Good Practice” wiki page led Joseph Eisenberg to consult the tagging mailing list. He felt that the new sections “Check the history of important objects” and “Don’t map insignificant, perishable and mobile object” are duplications of previous sections and removed them.
• Leif Rasmussen announced the start of voting on the connectivity relation proposal which intends to improve the mapping of lane connections at intersections.
• The tag tourism=camp_pitch for individual pitches within a campsite has been approved.
• Russian OSMer Pavel Gavrilov wrote a big and comprehensive article in WikiOSM about how Strava (automatic translation) data could make OSM more accurate.

Community

• The Data Working Group announced that it hid a handful of blog entries in the OSM user diaries which involved insulting comments.
• The FOSSGIS, OSM’s local chapter in Germany, announced (automatic translation) financial support for mapping parties at OSM’s 15th birthday on 10-11 August.
• Chris Beddow from Mapillary blogged about the evolution of OSM, mapping technologies and OSM’s communities. His conclusion is that every mapper, every single community in OSM matters and the ties between all stakeholders, be it commercial companies or volunteers, should be made stronger.
• A number of changes in the imagery layers within OSM editors have been made at the request of Maxar (the parent company of Digital Globe, whose products are being rebranded). Kevin Bullock of Maxar wrote a diary entry explaining these changes in more detail.Regular OSM contributors may have already noticed that the Digital Globe imagery layers have disappeared from the online editors. They will have also noted the appearance of two equivalent, but generally more up-to-date, layers called Maxar Premium and Maxar Standard. JOSM is following suit, but some performance issues will not be resolved until later in July.The removal of the Digital Globe layers was implemented as a pull request by Bryan Housel.
• At the beginning of June a Mapathon “June floors” took place (automatic translation) in Russia. During the week (3 to 10 June) the Russian OSM community assigned floors to buildings which didn’t have them before. 184 mappers took part in this event. Floors were updated for 7643 objects.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• In an email to the OSMF and the Talk lists, SeverinGeo points out that the Organised_Editing_Guidelines are obviously not taken seriously. A discussion has started about this topic regarding how to handle this situation. A list of all current organised editing activities should be here.
• Gregory Marler advertises the hosting of the next State of the Map conference with a blog post titled “Why your community should host State of the Map”.

Events

• With a visual impression of last year’s State of the Map Latam, OSM is providing an outlook of upcoming conferences in Latin America. The SOTM Argentina is scheduled for 27 July in Santa Fe followed by the State of the Map Latam 2019 which will take place in Paraguay in November.
• The videos from SotM CZ/SK 2016 have been published.

Humanitarian OSM

• Médecins Sans Frontières is looking for helpers for two mapathons to be held in Hong Kong on Monday, 5 August and Sunday, 1 September.
• The minutes for the HOT board meeting of 13 June 2019 have been made available.

Maps

• Kontur has created a map showing the density of OSM objects per unit of population, mostly to help with humanitarian mapping.
• The Nizhniy Novgorod (Russia) City Administration created (translation) a GIS-portal which shows mobile retail facilities (street kiosks) and advertising structures. OSM is used as a base map.
• The French search engine Qwant, which targets privacy sensitive users, is starting its own map service. The privacy-preserving service Qwant Maps is based on OSM data.

switch2OSM

• OpenStreetMap Slovenia noticed the use of OSM maps in civil protection and disaster relief vehicles (translation).

Software

• omgitsgela published a guide on how to use JOSM on a Chromebook in their OSM user diary.
• The MapOSMatic instance at osm-baustelle.de has added “OSM Notes” as an overlay you can add to your map and map index.

Programming

• tchaddad detailed the work done on the Google Summer of Code project to add data from Wikidata to Nominatim. The first step, according to the blog post, is the update and improvement of the existing Wikipedia extraction scripts.

Releases

• Different versions of the webapp Noticias Aquí E Agora are now available in Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, and English. The webapp Noticias Aquí E Agora makes it easy to find the nearest local independent restaurants, cafes and bookstores, which compete against chains, such as McDonalds, Starbucks and Amazon. If your favorite food location or independent bookstore is missing from OpenStreetMap, please add it to OSM. Please include the site link (URL) so that access to the menu of any nearby restaurant will be just a few clicks away.
• Wambacher always keeps his OSM software list up to date with the latest releases. He has received further suggestions for OSM-using software to add to his list from the forum. (automatic translation)

Did you know …

• [1] …this methodology aimed at improving the completeness, precision and consistency of the major road network? This work was recently presented at SotM-Fr 2019. It measures OSM data against open data references like gROADS to assess the quality and quantity and to find areas which need improvement through Tasking Manager projects and prioritization uMap tasks. The developers are asking for contributions to this project, started in 2015 and currently covering nine African countries. A specific Directed Editing sub-page has been created in the OSM wiki.
• …that the Russian mapper Rainbow Fox wrote (translation) WhereIsMyPhoto which simplifies searching through collections of photos? When the image has geodata the shooting location is shown on the OSM basemap.
• … OpenAndroMaps? The website offers downloads of different styled vector maps for smartphones. The styles are regularly updated and improved. As a user please note the Elevate 4 update.
• On the website Wo ist Markt? you can see the weekly markets, vegetable markets and flea markets of different cities in Germany. Besides an information page (automatic translation) you can find further details on the GitHub Repo page.
• … the ghost town of Kitsault in Canada, with a single inhabitant? The mining settlement was abandoned in 1983, but the houses, land, hospital and shops have since been maintained by an investor using a few local people to prepare for a future generation of miners. An 18-month old article in Stern (automatic translation) provides more background, and a short film about it. (It remains to consider whether the tagging with place=city is correct.)

Other “geo” things

• The reporting platform RADar! uses OpenStreetMap and is an online citizen participation and planning tool of Climate Alliance. The RADar! app or the Internet can be used to draw attention to disturbing and dangerous spots along the cycle path. The messages can be viewed on the website and are often well suited for updating the current state of cycle paths in OSM 😉
• Michael Marz has started (automatic translation) a personal project which offers all primary map features (distinct keys) in their own separate downloadable package. Further information can be found at the GitHub page.
• The Japan Times reported that Benin is now proud to have a modern digital map to replace the last map from 1957. A lot of work was needed, carried out by 30 Beninese cartographers. The project was initiated by the United Nations (UNDP) with financial support from the European Union.
• Saadiq Mohiuddin described how he created a map of curb parking rules in Calgary.
• Is there an OSM key on your keyboard? The keyboard of user ImreSamu has one.
• Be careful when working with data, a slight misalignment of coordinates meant a property developer qualified for tax cuts for the poor.
• To avoid traffic congestion, Google diverted almost 100 cars in Colorado onto an unpaved dirt road where they got stuck.
• The Wikimedia Foundation has blocked a long-time administrator of the English Wikipedia for a year because due to a code-of-conduct violation, without giving details. The community is appealing against the lack of transparency and the circumvention of typical decision paths. Individual admins have delivered a user-block edit war with the Foundation. BuzzFeed News reports about it. The June issue of The Signpost, an internal monthly magazine of the English Wikipedia, has several articles on the subject.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	When	Country
Salzburg	YouthMappers Workshop	2019-07-05
Ivrea	Incontro mensile	2019-07-06
Makati City	OSMPH × GrabPH Mapathon 1	2019-07-06
Taipei	OSM x Wikidata #6	2019-07-08
Bordeaux	Réunion mensuelle	2019-07-08
Toronto	Toronto Mappy Hour	2019-07-08
Lyon	Rencontre mensuelle pour tous	2019-07-09
Munich	Münchner Stammtisch	2019-07-09
Salt Lake City	SLC Mappy Hour	2019-07-09
Hamburg	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2019-07-09
Wuppertal	OSM-Treffen Wuppertaler Stammtisch im Hutmacher 18 Uhr	2019-07-10
Zurich	OSM Stammtisch Zurich	2019-07-11
Berlin	133. Berlin-Brandenburg Stammtisch	2019-07-11
San José	Civic Hack Night & Map Night	2019-07-11
Ulmer Alb	Stammtisch Ulmer Alb	2019-07-11
Dortmund	Mappertreffen	2019-07-12
Cologne Bonn Airport	Bonner Stammtisch	2019-07-16
Lüneburg	Lüneburger Mappertreffen	2019-07-16
Viersen	OSM Stammtisch Viersen	2019-07-16
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2019-07-22
Nottingham	Nottingham pub meetup	2019-07-23
Reading	Missing Maps Reading Mapathon	2019-07-23
Salt Lake City	SLC Map Night	2019-07-23
Lübeck	Lübecker Mappertreffen	2019-07-25
Santa Fe	State of the Map Argentina 2019	2019-07-27
Dumaguete	Pista ng Mapa 2019	2019-08-01-2019-08-03
Minneapolis	State of the Map U.S. 2019 [2]	2019-09-06-2019-09-08
Edinburgh	FOSS4GUK 2019	2019-09-18-2019-09-21
Heidelberg	Erasmus+ EuYoutH OSM Meeting	2019-09-18-2019-09-23
Heidelberg	HOT Summit 2019	2019-09-19-2019-09-20
Heidelberg	State of the Map 2019 [3]	2019-09-21-2019-09-23
Wellington	FOSS4G SotM Oceania 2019	2019-11-12-2019-11-15
Grand-Bassam	State of the Map Africa 2019	2019-11-22-2019-11-24

Note: If you like to see your event here, please put it into the calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM. Please check your event in our public calendar preview and correct it, where appropriate.

This weeklyOSM was produced by Nakaner, NunoMASAzevedo, Polyglot, Rogehm, SK53, SeverinGeo, Silka123, SunCobalt, TheSwavu, YoViajo, derFred, geologist, jinalfoflia, muramototomoya, tordans.